I’ve decided to start a blog because there is only so much one can convey in short poems on the internet, and I wanted to have a space to talk more in depth about what I really think about love, life, and relationships. First, a little more about me than I have previously divulged. I grew up in a small town in Washington State, my mother was a teacher and my father was an alcoholic who came in and out of my life like wind. I didn’t start writing poetry until college, and it was nothing like what I write now. It was more surreal, absurd; “like a chance meeting of a sewing machine and a umbrella on an operating table,” to quote Lorca. I eventually even got a degree in poetry, but it was the academic elitist kind of poetry that I eventually ended up hating, and what lead me to writing poems on Instagram. I loved how simple the poetry was one social media, and how it connected with everyone, especially people who wouldn’t otherwise read poetry. Of course, there was a classically trained part of me that wanted to know where the metaphors went, but I quickly got over it, and realized if I wrote poetry under a pen name, I could let go of my poetry ego, and just write for the people, because I honestly believe poetry should be for everyone. And so my life as Mark Anthony, “a social media poet,” “instapoet,” or whatever name you want to give it, began. And now, six years later, I am blown away by having six books of poetry, and over a million followers on Facebook who read my words on the daily. In short, I hope that this blog will help fill in some of the blanks left out in my poems, so that you will know better what fuels my poetry, and what kind of person I am behind the posts.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, Mark